1. Technical Field
An aspect of the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, which is configured to convey a sheet of recording medium and form an image on the recording medium.
2. Related Art
An image forming apparatus, such as a laser printer, in which sheets of recording media stacked in a sheet tray or a sheet cassette are picked up by a feed roller and conveyed to an image forming unit one-by-one, is known. In the image forming unit, an electrostatic latent image formed on a surface of a latent image carrier (e.g., a photosensitive drum) is developed to be a toner image, and the toner image on the latent image carrier is transferred onto the sheet being conveyed. Thus, an image is formed on the sheet of recording medium.
When the sheets of paper are conveyed in the image forming apparatus in a flow along a sheet conveying direction, the sheets may carry paper dust thereon. The dust may rise and adhere onto the sheets in various situations. For example, the dust may be caused by friction when the sheet is picked up by the feed roller and float in the image forming apparatus. Moreover, the sheets stored in the sheet tray may already contain dust in there-between. Whilst the dust may cause adverse effects in an image forming operation, in order to remove the dust, the image forming apparatus may have a system to remove the dust from the sheet being carried toward the image forming unit. The dust removal system may be arranged in an upstream position with respect to the image forming unit along the sheet conveying direction.
A dust removal system provided in a pair of register rollers, which correct an orientation of the sheet being conveyed, is known. More specifically, one of the paired register rollers may serve as a dust remover roller to absorb the dust from the sheet. The dust adhered onto the dust remover roller may be scraped off from the dust remover roller by a sheet of scraper.